Lucía I. Llorente

On the importance of circumlocution in the Spanish language classroom

Arteaga and Llorente (2009) argue for the importance of addressing lexical regional variety in the Spanish language classroom. They advocate teaching students a dialectally neutral term that will be understood across dialectal zones. One problem with this approach, however, is the difficulty of identifying words that have the most currency among dialects. This paper argues for supplementing the use of neutral terms by the skill of circumlocution, which has been argued to be a valuable skill for second language learners in general (Rubin, 1975, Oxford and Nyikos, 1989, Schweers, 1999), although it must be taught explicitly. Model exercises that foster the use of circumlocution, while also emphasizing neutral terms, are given. This combination will allow students to communicate effectively with speakers of a wide variety of dialects.